THE GIRL IN INDUSTRY "The adolescent stage of life has long seemed to me one of the most fascinating of all themes, more worthy, perhaps, than anything in the world of reverence, most inviting study, and in most crying need of a service we do not yet understand how to render aright." G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, I. xix. THE GIRL IN INDUSTRY BY D. J. COLLIER WITH A FOREWORD AND INTRODUCTION BY B. L. HUTCHINS AUTHOR OF "WOMEN IN MODERN INDUSTRY" [Illustration] LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 1918 CONTENTS PAGE Foreword. B. L. Hutchins v Introduction. B. L. Hutchins ix Part I. Investigation. D. J. Collier 1 Part II. Recommendations. D. J. Collier 49 Table I. 55 Table II. 56 FOREWORD The problem of the adolescent at work is a very complex one; not only the economic, but also the educational, physiological, and biological reactions of industrial work have to be considered. The present work does not attempt anything like a comprehensive discussion of the subject; it is merely a small contribution to existing knowledge of the facts in regard to one section only: the physiological effects of industrial work on growing girls. The young, it is often said, are the nation's capital. If by this we merely mean that they are the force by which the material goods of the future will be produced, our view of life is inadequate and rather brutal, but if the words are given a higher and more spiritual sense they become full of significance. Youth is the future: from among the young of to-day the parents, citizens, leaders, prophets, artists of the next generation will arise. Work at this age should be considered not only for the shillings it will immediately produce, but partly for its effects on the worker's productive power later on, partly for its effects on character, physique, mind. Dr. Stanley Hall says of modern industry: "Not only have the forms of labour been radically changed within a generation or two, but the basal activities that shaped the body of primitive man have been suddenly swept away by the new methods of modern industry.... Work is rigidly bound to fixed hours, uniform standards, stints and piece-products, and instead of a finished article, each individual now achieves a part of a single process, and knows little of those that precede or follow. Machinery has relieved the large basal muscles and laid more stress upon fine and exact movements that involve nerve strain.... Personal interest in, and the old native sense of responsibility for results, ownership and use of the finished products, which have been the inspiration and soul of work in the past, are in more and more fields gone."[1] The conditions